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Top Grades by a Dash of (Advanced) Punctuation

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MANY STUDENTS are looking for ways to improve their writing for examination success. As a teacher of English for over 30 years, I discovered that students could learn how to use colons and semicolons quite quickly if they were presented in the right way. As learners get older, they naturally will write sentences that need these wonderful punctuation marks. Sadly, however, the majority of students have not usually been taught how to use them confidently. “Explain and expand” , and “connect or contrast” are some of the guidelines I offer, and you can read more in my ebook “ A Dash of Punctuation ” which is available to read and purchase on Amazon . Using colons is not something to fear : they can seriously improve your writing. Semicolons confuse some ; they liberate others! Do you see how easy it is to use these great punctuation marks? You can find out more about how we help students develop their writing in our other ebooks: The Five Sentence Type Workbook  and ...
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Top Grades in Writing

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In my experience as an English teacher and tutor, most students do not understand the basic grammatical structures of sentences.   This prevents them from achieving their full potential and leads to lots of unnecessary errors. You can only get so far without understanding grammar.  Without this grammatical understanding, you can’t access more complex structures and more sophisticated punctuation. If you read the following, you’ll see five different sentence types in use: Really?  Students write sentences all the time.  Many rely on simple sentence forms and this can make their writing unambitious.  Complex sentences, which require more exact punctuation, are rarely used.  Multiple complex sentences, which are really quite advanced sentence structures, are usually unheard of, but this means that students, who are quite capable of writing them, might not be accessing the highest grades. You can find out more about how I help students develop their writing in ...
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Improve Creative Writing for Exams

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We believe in inspiring and nurturing excellence at Hartland Educational Consultancy Services, and this includes helping students improve their writing for exams like GCSE, 11+ and IELTS. The student showcase section of our website features writing students have done with our support for 11+ , KS3 and GCSE.  These include a 22 chapter story by Sukitha  in Year 5, a nine chapter mini novel by Anas  in Year 9 and a GCSE piece by Violet in Year 10 designed to develop student vocabulary Our ebook   "But I'm No Good At Creative Writing"  is central to our teaching of creative writing and is  available to purchase from Amazon , currently on sale at a special offer price of £1.99 for the month leading up to Christmas 2025.  Find out more about our other ebooks  to encourage better writing .
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How to learn quotations for top grades at English Literature GCSE and A Level

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 by Michael Hartland TO DO WELL in English Literature at both GCSE and A Level, students need to  memorise quotations . But some students find this difficult. There are a number of key steps in this process: develop an overview of the whole text identify important quotations which are worth learning learning the actual quotations A technique I use with my students is known as  dual coding  (see my previous post on using dual coding to learn new vocabulary  here ). This highly effective (and fun!) technique, involves writing the quotation as part of a quick sketch (great artistic skill is not required!) that is associated with the quotation.  Whenever I demonstrate dual coding to students, they immediately see its power, and find they have learnt it without any effort at all.  They have already taken their first step to improving their grade at English Literature. Find out more about our  tutoring services   here . Find out more about the ...
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Revising Themes for Top Grades

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  'How to Revise a Literature Text' is one of the most popular posts on this blog.  Today's post is the next step: exploring themes . Every text has themes, which are its leading ideas .  In ' Macbeth ', ' Jekyll and Hyde ' and ' Lord of the Flies ', it's evil.   In ' Romeo and Juliet ' and ' A Christmas Carol ', it's different kinds of love.  In ' An Inspector Calls ' it's responsibility.   After you have worked out the key events of the text, start to consider how you would use these to explain how the text makes us think more deeply about its leading ideas. Exploring themes one of the areas where I find students seeking top grades often need further stretching. Even students seeking good grades benefit from the individual attention required to help them develop their understanding and expression. This is one of many very practical exercises I use to help students improve their knowledge and understanding of lit...
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How to Revise a Literature Text?

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  by Michael Hartland As an English tutor , I am often asked to help students improve their ability to  study and write about literature texts .  Especially before Mocks and final exams...! The first thing to do, after actually reading the text, of course, is to  get an overview of the text . One of the ways to do this is to think about key events in the text. What are the main things that happen?   In what order do they happen?   How do they fit together? Try to stand back and see the wood for the trees.   What's important at the beginning?  How do things develop?  How does it end? This is one of many very practical exercises I use to help students improve their knowledge and understanding of literature texts they are studying either at GCSE or A Level.  This improves their confidence and ultimately their performance and grades. Find out more about our  tutoring services   here . Find out more about the   ...
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Testimonial

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  Thanks to Tertia for her testimonial about her son's experience of our services culminating in his fantastic GCSE results this summer: "Thank you so much for your help with Mysonn’s English GCSEs. Mysonn looked forward to his lessons with you each week and gained a new appreciation for English lessons. As a high performing student in all other subjects he only struggled with English. With your help he was able to secure a Grade A in Lit and Lang, which helped him gain his preferred 6th Form place and will help with his A Levels. I also believe your tutoring helped him approach long mark questions in other subjects in a more considered way." https://hartlandeducationalconsultancyservices.com/testimonials/
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